I’ve been suffering from repeated BSOD for a month or so. Very strange in that there doesn’t seem to be a pattern for when they occur. They are all Kernel Data Inpage Errors.

Examining the error dump files with the Windows debugging tool, it seems this is “typically caused by a bad block in the paging file or disk controller error”.

So I downloaded HD Tune Pro, and it is showing S.M.A.R.T errors in two categories for my Crucial M4 system drive. (05) Retired Block Count (also known as Reallocated Sectors Count) shows 24,576!

(C4)Reallocation Event Count shows 6 and also seems to warrant a notification of problems.

I’ve done what I can to eliminate any other possible sources for the BSOD’s. Virus scans show nothing. Ran chkdsk. Went back to a saved image from months ago, when I know for certain that there were no problems in the system. Operating system is fully updated. New drivers for various types of hardware have done nothing. The system is not overheating, and in fact has been doing very well in video encodes for hours upon hours of 100% CPU use. Windows Memory Diagnostic and MemTest 86+ have shown no errors in memory.

There is no common program being used when the BSOD occurs. It even did it while idling, with nothing except background services going.

So, it looks like a hard drive beginning to fail to me. I’ve requested an RMA from Crucial, but haven’t received a confirmation email from them yet.

With that many reallocated blocks, it would seem the SSD is failing, but there is only one sure way of knowing for sure.

Clone your old image to an HDD (if possible), unplug the SSD and run the system from HDD for a few days. No BSOD with the HDD would point to the SSD being the cause.

If you still get a BSOD with the HDD then it would point to RAM, even though it passes memtest. Other causes, the CPU is degrading, and the memory controller may require a little hike in voltage to run stable.

To be fair to Crucial, my first email to them only mentioned the Reallocation Event Count. When I told them that it also had 24,576 reallocated blocks, they immediately sent an RMA number for me.

They don’t have any more M4 SSD’s to send as a replacement, but will be sending a 240gb M500 instead.

The drive I’m using at the moment seems to be working fine. Can’t tell by that though. The BSOD’s have been very sporadic over the last month, and though the time between occurrences was getting shorter there was simply no way to predict when they would happen.